BY STEVE ROTHAUS

Her face has, hmmm, changed over the years, but the way she talks is vintageJoan Rivers.

``Someone told me -- and I hate the term -- stars have very distinct voices. You know Cher, immediately. You knowLiza, immediately,'' says Rivers, who performs Wednesday night in Miami. ``When I was a little girl, I picked up the phone and someone said, `Little boy, put your mother on.' I almost died. Now,Chastity Bono would have loved that!''

Johnny Carson put Rivers on the map, booking her on The Tonight Showin 1965. Two decades later, she became his permanent guest host.

When Rivers learned she wouldn't succeed Carson at NBC, she signed in 1986 with the new Fox network, to become its first late-night talk host -- and directly compete with him.

Carson stopped speaking to her.

``He was not a nice man,'' Rivers says. ``I called him and he hung up on me. He kept a feud going for 16 years. You suddenly saw why Johnny got to be Johnny.''

``I like Leno because once I watch the show, I won't be able to handle heavy machinery for a couple of hours. I never watch it,'' Rivers says. ``A Leno punch line is like seeing Aretha Franklin coming at you on the beach. You can see it a long way off.''

Brooklyn-born Rivers, 76, still lives in New York, though she's on the road about two weeks a month. When in town, she performs Wednesdays in a 97-seat Hell's Kitchen nightclub.

Over the summer, Rivers taped two episodes in Miami Beach of her TV Land reality series, How'd You Get So Rich?, in which she visits the fancy homes of wealthy celebrities.

WASHINGTON – Today, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, released a video ad featuring Emmy and Tony Award-winner Kristin Chenoweth for the group’s Americans for Marriage Equality campaign. In the video, Chenoweth states, “The bottom line is that regardless of how you were made or who you love, you should be able to get married if you want to get married. I truly believe it’s that simple.” The video can be viewed online at hrc.org/marriageequality.

“We are incredibly grateful to Kristin Chenoweth for lending her legendary voice to the fight for marriage equality nationwide,” said Human Rights Campaign spokesperson Charles Joughin. “Like Kristin, a majority of Americans already support marriage for gay and lesbian couples. And thanks to her and countless others across the country, it’s only a matter of time before a state border no longer dictates your ability to marry the person you love.”

Emmy and Tony Award-winner Kristin Chenoweth effortlessly transitions between stage, screen and an accomplished singing career. Many remember her show-stealing, Tony-winning performance in You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown and her triumphant star turn when she originated the role of Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked, which earned her a Tony Award nomination. Chenoweth has explored numerous and diverse roles for film and television, including “Pushing Daisies,” for which she received an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, “The West Wing,” and “Glee,” which earned her Emmy and People’s Choice Award nominations.

Chenoweth has completed production on the Universal film “The Boy Next Door,” alongside Jennifer Lopez, “Opposite Sex,” an indie teen drama entitled “Hard Sell” and the Disney Channel’s live-action original movie “Descendents,” in which she will play the classic Sleeping Beauty villain Maleficent. This fall, Chenoweth will host the PBS Arts Fall Festival, featuring classic Broadway hits, music from around the country and theatre performances. The festival will include her own concert performance, “Kristin Chenoweth: Coming Home,” where she will perform a career-spanning concert in her hometown of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The concert will be released as a live CD and DVD in November. And in early 2015, she will return to Broadway, playing the glamorous film star, Lily Garland, in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s 20-week limited engagement of “On the Twentieth Century.”

Same-sex couples can legally marry in nineteen states and the District of Columbia, while 31 states have a law or constitutional amendment restricting marriage to the union of one man and one woman. However, polling continues to show Americans moving inexorably in the direction of supporting equality for same-sex couples, and there are over 70 court cases across the country challenging bans on marriage equality.

Nationally, Gallup puts support for marriage equality at 55 percent – an astonishing 15 points increase from just 5 years ago – with other polls showing support at even higher margins. And support for same-sex marriage rights continues to grow in virtually every demographic group. According to ABC News / Washington Post, 77 percent of adults under age 30 favor marriage equality. 40 percent of Republicans – an all-time high and jump of 16 points in under two years – now support marriage for gay and lesbian couples, while the number of Catholics supporting marriage has grown to 62 percent, according to the New York Times. These numbers continue to grow, with no indication that support will slow down.

HRC’s Americans for Marriage Equality campaign seeks to advance marriage equality nationwide and provide up-to-the-minute information for lawmakers, legal experts, media, and grassroots supporters. Following the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8 last year, new marriage equality battles are underway in the courts, at the ballot and in public education campaigns. The campaign’s video series will draw from a cadre of supportive professional athletes, film and music celebrities, and political and civic leaders speaking out in favor of marriage rights for same-sex couples nationwide. For more information on the campaign or to see the videos, visit http://americansformarriageequality.org.

Ichabod and Mr. Toad (made in 1949 and the inspiration for Disneyland's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride) runs 68 minutes and comes paired with Disney's Fun and Fancy Free, a 1947 collection of short subjects including Mickey and the Beanstalk, which marked the final time Walt Disney himself voiced the famous mouse. ($37)

Both films look and sound great. Hidden away on the Blu-ray as a bonus feature is the 1941 Disney feature The Reluctant Dragon, a black-and-white and color film that mixed live action and animation. The live action sequences star Robert Benchley, a popular New Yorker humorist at the time who later became known as grandfather of Jaws author Peter Benchley.

The Reluctant Dragon is set at Walt Disney Studios and offers a unique glimpse at how the company produced such films as Bambi and Dumbo.

By the late 1960s, Walt Disney was dead and several post-Mary Poppins films were already in preparation. Among the better known: Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which utilized many of the Mary Poppins creators, including songwriters Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman, screenwriters Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi and director Robert Stevenson. The Lansbury film even co-starred Poppins' David Tomlinson, who in the 1964 Julie Andrews classic played the children's father, Mr. Banks.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks isn't quite in Poppins' league, but actually is quite entertaining and a bit darker than the earlier movie. It is set in 1940's England during the London Blitz in World War II, and the villains are Nazis.

Bedknobs ran nearly 2 1/2 hours hours when it originally premiered in 1971, but Disney quickly shorted the film to 117 minutes for its general release. That's the version most people remember, but nearly 20 years ago the studio restored much of the edited footage for home video. The film's new Blu-ray contains the shorter general release version, along with the edited footage as bonus material.

Disney Blu-ray has also released Tarzan (1999), Hercules (1997) and Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004). Each retails for $30 and all films (except the Ichabod and Mr. Toad/Fun and Fancy Free package) include digital copies.

Two years ago, I interviewed her son, Stephen Bogart, now of Naples, Fl.

He reminisced about his parents on the 70th anniversary of Bogart's classic, Casablanca.

Here's the article from March 2012:

On 70th anniversary of 'Casablanca,' son Stephen Bogart recalls great romance of Bogie and Bacall

BY STEVE ROTHAUS

srothaus@MiamiHerald.com

Time’s gone by: Casablanca, one of the world’s best-loved films is 70, Humphrey Bogart has been dead more than a half-century and his young widow, movie star Lauren Bacall, is now 87.

“It was one of the greatest romances of the 20th century,” said their son Stephen Bogart, now 63 and selling real estate in Naples, Fla. “He died so young. But they found each other and many people don’t.”

Bogie married Bacall in 1945, three years after he starred opposite Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, which will screen Wednesday night in movie theaters nationally and be re-issued March 27 in a special edition Blu-ray/DVD combo set (Warner Home Video).

Bacall made her first film in 1944 starring opposite Bogart in To Have and Have Not.

Bogart was 25 years older than Bacall — 19 when they made the movie. “That would have gone over well today,” Stephen jokes.

But Bacall was more than a match for Bogart. “She was an old soul,” Stephen says. “They had just done To Have and Have Not. [Their romance] evolved that way because of what happened on the screen. He was the highest-paid actor of his time. No. 1. You saw him fall in love on the screen. It was Bogie and Bacall.”

The couple had stellar movie careers in the ‘40s and ‘50s. He starred in The Maltese Falcon (1941), The African Queen (1951), The Caine Mutiny and Sabrina (both 1954; she in Young Man With a Horn (1950), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Designing Woman (1957). Together, they also made The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948).

Stephen and his sister, Leslie, now 59, were youngsters when their father, 57, died of cancer in 1957.

Bacall, then 32, famously stood by her husband in his final days. “She was tough,” Stephen Bogart says. “She did take care of him. It was too bad it ended the way it did. It almost ruined her.”

She later fell in love with and married Oscar-winning actor Jason Robards. The couple had a son, Sam, now an actor and film director. Bacall and Robards were wed from 1961-69.

After their divorce, Bacall made a career comeback, this time on Broadway in two Tony-winning musical star vehicles: Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981).

Stephen Bogart has three grown children, including son Richard, a University of Miami law student.

The son of Bogie and Bacall — whose gravelly voice is just like dad's — has mostly avoided show business. “I was in a play in high school,” Stephen Bogart says. “I wasn’t very good. I was not a good actor. It’s not easy to be good. I could have been a bad actor.”

Instead, he opted for a career in TV news, working at ESPN, NBC and Court TV.

Now, he co-manages Humphrey Bogart’s name and likeness. His father’s estate receives no residuals from the old films. “If we owned the rights to Casablanca, that would be lovely,” Stephen Bogart says.

BY STEVE ROTHAUS

Miami celebrity photographer David Vance has long been associated with Warwick. In 2012, he photographed her for the album, Now.

Vance on Friday photographed Elliott, who is readying her first album.

"I've been doing photos of Dionne since 1982 and now her granddaughter has recorded her first CD," Vance says.

Vance shares with us an outtake from the photo session, a portrait of Grammy and granddaughter.

Vance, who's also famous for photographing beautiful men, describes Friday's Miami session as "a great shoot."

"Cheyenne is one stunning and charming 19 year old. Very sweet," he says. "We were were having such a good time before I knew it it was after 6 pm. It's always great to see Dionne, after 30 years, when she's here it's like a relative is visiting."

Cheyenne Elliott was born into a world of song. Hailing from a family of musical royalty, which includes her grandmother - five-time Grammy Award winner Dionne Warwick, cousin - Whitney Houston, aunts - Dee Dee Warwick & Cissy Houston and uncle - Damon Elliott (hit music producer), it comes without question that Cheyenne would have an innate vocal talent herself. To bring it all full circle, her father - David Elliott - is an accomplished vocalist and songwriter, who is best known for penning Luther Vandross’ Grammy Award winning hit, “Here and Now.”